Posts Tagged: recipe

Make This Tonight: Curried Apple Chicken and Sweet Potatoes

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I have a confession to make: I love Clean Eating magazine. I hate the term “clean eating” because it sounds stupid (if you “eat clean,” do you think other people “eat dirty”? Ugh. Gross.), and I hate diets and eating plans in general, but I can get behind this concept for the most part. It’s just about not eating processed food, so, whatever. Also, have you even seen Tosca Reno, the woman behind the clean eating empire? She’s in her 50s but she looks way younger. Eating clean has given her ever-lasting life, and tiny shopping carts, apparently.
tosca reno eat clean

Last week, I used the magazine’s super-easy recipe for chicken and sweet potatoes. It might sound weird to combine those ingredients with applesauce and curry, and I guess it is, but H. and I both still liked it. I also made snow peas and white rice, which probably would’ve killed Tosca. Not clean at all. I’m aware that this isn’t necessarily the prettiest meal in the world, but whatever.
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Curried Apple Chicken and Sweet Potatoes

Ingredients:
2 sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1 inch chunks
1/2 cup chopped yellow onion
16 oz boneless, skinless chicken thighs
1/2 tsp kosher salt
1/4 tsp ground black pepper
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup applesauce
1 TBSP honey
2 tsp apple cider vinegar
1 tsp curry powder
1/2 tsp ground ginger

In a crockpot, layer the sweet potatoes, onion, and chicken thighs. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.

In a medium bowl, combine garlic, applesauce, honey, vinegar, curry, and ginger. Spoon over chicken, cover and cook on low until chicken is tender and cooked through (6-7 hours, depending on your slow cooker).

Another bonus? This is made in the crock pot. What’s better than coming home to a kitchen that smells like curry? Nothing! Unless you hate curry, in which case there are probably a lot of things better for you.

Make This Tonight: Double Coconut Chocolate Chip Cookies

coconut oil trader joes
I have some advice for those of you who might be planning weddings: elope.

Okay, so I’m kind of kidding. But also? I’m kind of not. Most people who give me wedding advice say some variation of “Girl, do you!” And I’m trying. But it’s proving a little harder than I suspected, and even though I vowed not to let planning a party stress me out so much, here I go, getting stressed out.

Enter stress-baking.

Sometimes, when you’re annoyed and exhausted, the best thing to do is bake something delicious. You may have noticed that this is my solution to most problems, but you know what? It works.

This week, I whipped up a batch of double coconut chocolate chip cookies. The coconut double shot consists of toasted coconut AND coconut oil. I was late to the coconut oil party, I’ll admit, but now I’m into it. I saw it all over the internet and I ignored it. Then Jordan suggested I try it and I was like, “Maybe!” And finally, Mama W. and I were at Trader Joe’s and she was like, “Look, there’s coconut oil. Didn’t you want to try it?” and I was all, “How did she KNOW?” because I always forget that she regularly reads my blog and then makes no mention of it as if I’m not going to know (Hi Mom).

Long story even longer, I bought that coconut oil and I’ve been using for every. damn. thing. in the kitchen. Sauteeing? Don’t mind if I do! Smoothies? Why not? Opening the jar and just smelling it every once in awhile? Sadly, yes.

And now baking!

The internet tells me that coconut oil can be subbed for butter in most recipes, so I decided to use it in chocolate chip cookies. The best part is that you can totally pretend these are good for you because, you know, healthy fats. Just ignore all the sugar and focus on the healthy fats.

These were awesome, and I made some without chocolate chips for H. so they’d be 100% dairy-free. And then I ate all the extra chocolate chips on my own. Don’t judge me. Also, please don’t judge this terrible picture. It’s winter and there’s no light around here.
double coconut chocolate chip cookies

Double Coconut Chocolate Chip Cookies
adapted from Cheeky Kitchen

about 1/3 cup shredded sweetened (or unsweetened, whatever) coconut
1/2 cup coconut oil
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspon baking soda
1 3/4 cup flour
1/2 cup chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Toast the coconut by stirring it around in a hot skillet until it turns brown. But be careful, because it burns easily! Set aside to cool.

In a large bowl, use an electric mixer to beat together coconut oil, eggs, brown sugar, and vanilla until very well mixed. Add the salt, baking powder, baking soda, and flour, mixing together until all are incorporated. Mix in the chocolate chips and toasted coconut. Roll into golf-ball sized balls and place on an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for 9-11 minutes, or just until the outside of the cookies have browned ever so slightly around the edges. Cool them on a cooling rack (or wherever, if you don’t have a cooling rack) and then make your fiance take them to his friends’ place so you can get them out of the house.

Coconut oil image via The Kitchn

Make This Tonight: Engagement Apple Crisp


Bear with me, you guys, because I know this is my second post in two days about my engagement. But it’s not really about my engagement, because it’s also about apple crisp, and you can never spend too much time on apple crisp.

So after H. proposed and I cleaned myself up/put on a dress, we went to meet up with our parents at a restaurant nearby. Unbeknownst to me, H. had told both sets of parents about the engagement and instructed them to get dinner there so we could all celebrate together. It was really special! Anyway, if you know anything at all about me, you know that by the time I got to this restaurant I had one thing on my very emotional mind: dessert. There were choices for days–chocolate mousse! Creme brulee! Any other generic “fancy dessert” you can imagine!–but they all had one thing in common. Dairy! SO MUCH DAIRY. Since H. is Dairy Free 4 Life, he ordered the one dairy-free food on the menu, an apple torte. But, because life doesn’t take kindly to the lactose intolerant, the waiter came back to our table to tell H. that they were out of apple tortes, but that he’d be happy to bring him something else dairy free.

Do you want to know what the waiter brought him?

A bowl of berries.

Yeah. Just a bowl of fruit. Don’t get me wrong, I love fruit. Berries are great. And they’re totally not in season right now, so it’s always a treat to have them. But do you want to eat a bowl of berries when everyone around you is eating chocolate mousse? No! You do not!

Since Wednesday, I’ve been feeling bad that H’s part of our Engagement Dessert was so lame. So I decided to make it up to him last weekend by making Joy the Baker’s Man Bait Apple Crisp.

On her site, it’s referred to as Sit and Stay Awhile Apple Crisp, but it’s basically the same recipe as the Man Bait Apple Crisp in her book. If you’re wondering about the name, she explains that this recipe will woo a man like nobody’s business. Personally, I’m not particularly interested in bringing another man into my life because I already have one and this isn’t some kind of reverse Sister Wives situation I’m running over here. But I figured this apple crisp might kind of make up for the fact that H’s dessert was nothing but fruit on Wednesday.

And if you doubt the “man bait” claims of this recipe, I have both my own testimonial and Friend of WTLV Lauren’s testimonial. Quoth Lauren: “I made that for Jason a few months into dating. Now we’re shacked up and engaged. CASE CLOSED.”

As for me, I intended to make this for Hollis, but by the time the apple crisp was done, there were two other men downstairs. Man bait. I set a trap and ensnared MULTIPLE MEN.

So proceed with caution when it comes to this recipe. Apparently it will either cause marriages or just bring several men into your life. Do what you will with this information, but be careful out there.

Thanks-For-Proposing-To-Me-and-Sorry-You-Ate-A-Bowl-Of-Berries Apple Crisp
adapted from Joy the Baker’s website and cookbook

bake in a 9×13 dish

Filling:
8 to 10 medium-size apples, peeled, cored and cut into 1/4-inch slices.
6 tbsp granulated sugar
3 tsp cinnamon

Topping:
2 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
2 2/3 cups lightly packed brown sugar
1 tsp ground cinnamon
2 sticks unsalted butter, well-softened
1 1/4 cup finely chopped pecans (I used walnuts because they were like 2 dollars cheaper and I’m thrifty)
2/3 cup quick oats

Preheat the oven to 350. Generously grease a 9×13 baking pan.

Place a layer of apple slices in the bottom of the pan and dust with sugar/cinnamon mixture. Continue layering apples and dusting with cinnamon/sugar until done. Toss the apple mixture until evenly coated in cinnamon sugar. The apples should be just about to the top of the pan (they will cook down).

For the topping, place the flour, brown sugar, nuts, cinnamon and oats in a large bowl and stir well with a wooden spoon. Work the butter into the mixture with your fingertips until evenly distributed. Take one full handful of the topping and toss it into the sugared apple mixture. Spread the rest of the topping evenly over the apples.

Bake the crisp in the dish on a baking sheet on the center oven rack until the topping is crunchy and the apples are bubbling, 55-60 minutes. I served it with Tofutti Vanilla Ice Cream, because of the whole “no dairy” thing.

This is a really wonderful apple crisp. Take it from me, Lauren, and Joy the Baker. But really think about how many men you want to bring into your life before you make it.

Lady Food: Baked Oatmeal

As you know, I’m nothing if not a sucker for a green smoothie. But even I get a hankering once in awhile for a different breakfast. As Kelly Clarkson often reminds me, I have to make a wish, take a chance, make a change, and make oatmeal. I’m pretty sure those were the lyrics to that song.

I saw a baked oatmeal recipe earlier this week and my tummy was immediately like, “Damn, girl! Let’s do what we need to do to get that oatmeal in us ASAP.” Naturally I trucked it to the library to get the cookbook (from the author of the food blog 101 Cookbooks, which you will love if you enjoy pretty pictures of food… and who doesn’t?) and I made it this morning. It was a cinch to mix up, and it made the apartment smell like vanilla and cinnamon while I was having an early hang sesh with my bro Rodney Yee.

It was a delightful breakfast with a nice cup of coffee. A saucer makes all the difference between a weekday and a Saturday, guys. Saucers mean leisure.

To Do: Make a Pie Crust

Some things you just don’t want to do every day. Like go to the gynecologist. Or renew your driver’s license. Or make a pie crust.

To be fair, one of those things is much less stressful than the others, and also has a much greater reward. Since I’m not enough of an exhibitionist as to talk to you about my doctor’s visits and not enough of a bore as to discuss my trips to the BMV, I’m talking about pie making.

Every year, I make a list of goals for myself, and “make a pie crust” has been on that list for about three years. Somehow, even though checking it off the list only required the investment of a couple hours and a few cups of flour, I just kept not making a pie crust. People often talk about how labor intensive the process is, and those Marie Callender’s pie crusts are right there next to the refrigerated crescent roll tubes, and the whole thing seemed to rely on equal parts luck and finesse, neither of which I have much of in the kitchen. As I started my 25th year by writing the words “Make a pie crust” yet again, it started to feel like that pie crust meant something. The pie crust was effort that I wasn’t expending, creativity that I wasn’t putting to use, chances that I wasn’t taking. That damn pie crust had begun to symbolize everything that frustrated me in my life.

Do you guys know how old Lady Gaga is? She’s 25. I’m 25. Look at how much she’s accomplished and look at how much I’ve accomplished. You don’t have to write a gay pride anthem or wear a meat dress or get really into method acting for an awards show, I told myself. You just have to make some dough.

So I made a pie crust this weekend. I used Joy the Baker’s recipe for Peach Blueberry Pie because a) peaches are at the end of their season and b) every Joy the Baker recipe turns out well and stuns the crowds.

I used an empty Sofia bottle as a rolling pin because I’m such a lush.

Here’s the thing about making pie crust: it doesn’t take that long, but it kind of does take that long. It’s slightly frustrating (personally, I don’t like cutting butter into flour OR rolling out dough) and it gets messy. You will get a lot of flour on your shirt; this is just something you will have to accept early on. Also, I think I did something wrong when I was mixing it up because mine seemed far crumblier than was described in the recipe. But guess what?

It’s a pie! It turned out okay, and earned such high praise as “This is actually pretty good” from one of H’s friends. The best kind of compliments are the reluctant kind that make it seem as if the compliment giver expected terrible things from you. Oh, wait. Those are the worst kind of compliments. No matter! I made a pie and it was good.

Was it better than the Marie Callender’s refrigerated pie crusts? Well…it tasted almost the same! While it will certainly make you feel about 85% more badass to make your own pie crust, probably no one will be able to tell if you just buy the refrigerated kind. You’ll lose some bragging rights, though, and then you won’t be that obnoxious girl who says things like, “Oh, a premade pie crust? No, I bake from scratch.”

One more thing to check off the ol’ to do list. If you’re venturing into the wild and wonderful world of pie baking, I’d recommend this recipe. Just try to cut your piece a little more neatly than I did.